Tumbleweed Whenever you think of the Wild West of America, you think of cowboy movies and tumbleweed, perpetually tumbling around a desolate landscape.
Salt lowers the freezing/melting point of water, so in both cases the idea is to take advantage of the lower melting point. Ice forms when theÂ­ temperature of water reaches 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). When you add salt, that temperature drops: A 10-percent salt solution freezes at 20 F (-6 C), and a 20-percent solution freezes at 2 F (-16 C). On a roadway, this means that if you sprinkle salt on the ice, you can melt it. The salt dissolves into the liquid water in the ice and lowers its freezing point.
Answer: Frozen Salt Water. If youâve ever stopped to ponder why exactly the freezing point on the Fahrenheit scale is set at 32 degreesâa rather arbitrary number, all things consideredâyouâll need to ponder all the way back to the 18th century. It was then, in the 1720s, that Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit was ironing out zero point for his temperature scale.